Bill van Zyll, Nintendo’s vice president and general manager for Latin America, says the company has no current plans to abandon physical games. Nintendo says it follows consumer preference rather than choosing one format, and Switch 2 supports both physical and digital releases.
Van Zyll noted that Switch 2 was only a little over a year into its life and said Nintendo knows fans value physical releases. The comments describe Nintendo’s current approach, not a promise that every boxed game will contain its data on a cartridge.
Sony’s plan to end disc production for new PlayStation releases from January 2028 has sharpened the debate. Nintendo’s position is different, although physical packaging does not always mean the game itself is stored on a Switch 2 card. Some releases use full cartridges, while Game Key Cards prompt a download instead of holding the game data, a format that has raised preservation concerns.
Physical sales remain a notable part of some recent launches. GSD figures published by The Game Business put physical copies at 35% of Marvel’s Wolverine launch sales overall and 51% in Europe. Switch 2 has its own game-specific example: CD Projekt Red’s H1 2025 figures showed that more than 75% of Cyberpunk 2077’s Switch 2 purchases were physical cartridges. Neither figure establishes how players choose formats across every game, but both show why physical releases remain part of the conversation.
Does a Game Key Card still feel like a physical game to you if the software has to be downloaded? Stay connected for coverage of Nintendo’s physical formats and the console industry’s disc plans through X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
